Ha, and my mate Georgina, I don’t think we were friends when you were at home we only met at Secondary, she saw a photo of his Sagrada Familia and thought she was going to fucking Disney Land! Disney Land, that’s just genius, isn’t it?! Anyway, my mates all come back saying how they’d had the most amazing time, like, ever? And how they’d gotten pissed with Mr Holdsworth, my art teacher, the one who’s obsessed with Bonnard’s wife in the bath? Anyway, they’d drunk sangria, and then this authentic Spanish thing, which is red wine mixed with coca-cola. So that’s what we were drinking last summer in a field full of crispy-coated cowpats. The usual glamour. We had a fire, there were guitars, we got wasted. I lost my virginity to my friend Dave. Yeah, Little Dave. But he’s my mate, it wasn’t anything. He can play The Beatles catalogue by ear. We sang the whole of Rubber Soul. We shared a tent. It was, curiosity. I mean, we were just kids. And the big surprise is – the incredible thing is – Dave didn’t tell anyone. And neither did I until now. And that’s weird for teenagers. It is. Believe me.
SENSE
by Anja Hilling (translated by Logan Kennedy and Leonhard Unglaub)
from Theatre Café: Plays Two
Sense was first performed in the UK on 27 April 2009 (as part of Theatre Café) at Southwark Playhouse, London.
Sense follows the lives of a group of teenagers and their search for friendship, love and identity. Their experiences are separated into I. Eyes, II. Nose, III. Skin, IV. Ears and V. Tongue. PHÖBE’s story is part of I. Eyes. She meets Fred, who is blind, at an eighteenth birthday party and is drawn into his world. He asks her to go swimming at the lake and, on the way, she becomes obsessed with his eyes and how he must ‘see’ the world.
PHÖBE
Lost myself in his eyes for more than forty minutes. And it wasn’t like looking into anyone else’s eyes. It was different. It was one-way. No back and forth. No exchange. Nothing came back at me. And I didn’t notice a single one of the stops the train made. I’m not lying that’s the way it was. I was inside his eye-sockets. Disappeared into them for forty minutes. I didn’t see anything there or else I forgot everything. I haven’t the faintest clue what goes on in there. But I was there. Happily. And then full of rage. I find you excessive in your blindness. Unreachable exaggerated an overdose. Awful. Helpless and unspeakably elegant. I see you beneath the stars zipping headlong through a universe. Then tripping over the curb. Your hand that always misses. Your hand in my bloodstream. Your foot in the gap between train and platform. I see you stumbling through the night. Falling over stones on the way to the lake. Gliding through the Milky Way. I want to be close to you. Closer.
I want to know how much more there is.
Behind your eyes.
I have a thousand questions.
Is it bright or dark your world.
Does music move inside you.
Like a snake maybe or like a spider or something.
Do noises have a smell and what about me.
Can you smell me.
Am I a colour a sound a movement.
Am I three-dimensional.
What do you think when you hear my voice.
Do you imagine me. Have an image.
Where would it come from.
Do you even know what that is. An image.
Or is there just a desert inside you.
Where nothing can grow.
I really want to know that want to see that.
The landscape behind your eyes.
I want to see what you see.
See myself with your eyes.
Whiz through your eyeballs.
Explode into your universe.
Be inside you shine and scream.
…
Then I blacked out.
SENSE
by Anja Hilling (translated by Logan Kennedy and Leonhard Unglaub)
from Theatre Café: Plays Two
Sense was first performed in the UK on the 27 April 2009 (as part of Theatre Café) at Southwark Playhouse, London.
Sense follows the lives of a group of teenagers and their search for friendship, love and identity. Their experiences are separated into I. Eyes, II. Nose, III. Skin, IV. Ears and V. Tongue. NATASCHA’s story is part of V. Tongue. She hates hearing the noise of people speaking and avoids speaking herself. However, things change when she hears Albert call out to her by name at the local swimming pool.
NATASCHA
Natascha. Natascha.
A miserable word.
That’s how it always starts.
Natascha.
After that nothing but night. Nothing.
That’s what it’s like my name.
A cruel beginning.
Three torturous syllables.
Three As. Three yelps of pain.
A T in the middle.
A beat a trembling t-t-t-t-t-t.
A pulsing in the auricle. A tensing in the brain muscles.
What follows I know it it’s always the same always pain.
Words words words.
Questions little jokes words words.
What follows. I never understand it. Never.
A voice shoots into me.
Bursts my eardrum.
Shoots letters into my small head.
Tears down bridges between my organs.
Pressure on the eyes velvet on the tongue shortness of breath.
My brain bursts into flame my lips twitch.
Someone wants to talk to me wants to hear answers.
It often starts with my name.
I say nothing. I can’t
It’s not that I don’t have an answer. I don’t have a voice.
My answer is a scream.
Nobody hears it. I don’t scream audibly.
I